October Volleyball Council Meeting Recap

Volleyball Council Meeting Highlights

At the most recent Volleyball Council Meeting, the Council passed the budget for the 2019 season, discussed ways to improve tournaments, and talked about rule changes regarding ghost players and pick up players. In addition, we opened a discussion on potentially bringing officiating "in-house" as opposed to contracting with the Alaska Volleyball Officials Association.

changes to tournaments

Starting in the 2019 Winter/Spring Session, both the Early Bird and the Mid-Season tournament formats will be pool play followed by single elimination. In addition, Championship teams will have the option to claim Tournament Champion T-Shirts as their prize, or to accept an Anchorage Sports credit of equal value to be used in a future tournament or team fee.

Ghost Rule

Beginning in January, teams that are playing short will no longer be penalized a point when it is the ghost player's turn to serve. The result of the ghost serve will still be a side-out and the opposing team will receive the ball to serve, but it will no longer result in a point for the opposing team.

officiating

Like all sports, officiating is an important part of running our leagues. Not only do officials enforce the rules of the game, but they provide additional structure and authority in the league.

Who officiates Anchorage Sports volleyball?

Currently, Anchorage Sports has a contract with the Anchorage Volleyball Officials Association (AVOA). We send our schedules to a designated official in the AVOA, and that person assigns the officials for all our games. The AVOA is responsible for recruiting and training the officials provided for our leagues and tournaments.

Proposed Changes

In order to cut costs for teams in the league and improve overall officiating, members of the council have proposed the following options:

Offer teams and/or leagues the option to be scheduled to officiate during the season. In exchange, the team would receive a discount on their team fee.

Anchorage Sports would hire, train, and schedule their own officials. This could include players in the league or other officials with experience in volleyball. Players who officiate could earn credit toward team, player, and tournament fees. Players and officials who choose not to accept credit toward these fees would be paid as independent contractors with Anchorage Sports.

Either of these changes would be a major change for Anchorage Sports volleyball and will continue to be discussed in great detail before any decisions are made. We encourage you to talk to your Council Representatives and voice your opinion so we can make the best decision possible for all players in our league.

PickUp Player Rule

Currently, a pickup player rule or policy does not exist for volleyball league play. Teams are allowed to play with a minimum of 4 players (in Reverse Coed, one player must be male), but if they have less than that available to play they must forfeit.

The Volleyball Council will be discussing possible policies that allow for pickup players in league play. While avoiding forfeits is an obvious benefit to allowing this, it also has the potential to negatively affect the leagues as a whole. Responsibility would fall to team managers to ensure pick up players are legal, eligible players. Teams would also need to ensure they have enough players rostered on their teams and are not relying on pickup players on a regular basis.

In 2017, player fees were reduced to encourage teams to roster more players to avoid forfeits; unfortunately, forfeits still happen and while we will probably never eliminate them completely, we would like to make sure as many games as possible are being played as scheduled.

The Volleyball Council will continue to discuss this issue, and again, we encourage you to talk to your council representative to voice your opinion on this issue.